Jay Critchley may just be the hippest guy on the Cape. A multi-media artist whose work has been seen internationally, whose last local happening was the captivatingly inventive one at the Herring Cove bathhouse in Provincetown, he was asked by U. Cal. Berkeley to present a piece for a show called “The Possible,” as one of a collection of artists engaging the public and interacting with it. “Instead of the ritual they may have expected me to do, I did a more formal piece,” he said, creating Planet Snowvio, a one-act musical. “I recruited people on craigslist, like my musical director, who used a nine-piece orchestra for the Berkeley version.”

The piece, still in progress, will land (without orchestra) at the Provincetown Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Aug. 23 (with cocktails with Jay prior at 6:30 and a suggested contribution of 25 bucks entry fee). It features video and live actor-singers (two from New York are currently in Rent at the Provincetown Theatre).

In Planet Snowvio, Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964, and Edward Snowden, intelligence agent who recently revealed the vast octopus of NSA spying, meet. Savio is dead but Snowden e-mails him, asking for his help, whence he returns to earth. Using songs from the 1960s and text ,the two characters confront Putin and Obama.

“Savio and Snowden are compadres, both have a strong moral sense of a higher calling. Both are truth tellers,” Critchley said. He sees neither as “radicals” – Savio did not espouse the Marxism of the ‘60s – and adds that the two are patriots, vilified by the status quo. (“Kill the messenger.”) He says Reagan, in league with J. Edgar Hoover, got elected governor of California by vowing to clean up the Free Speech Movement of those “weirdos and commies” on campus.

Those very ‘60s “weirdos” were responsible for opening up campuses across America to students’ free speech rights of protest, whether against the war in Vietnam, for the environment, for gender equality, for civil rights. “There had not been a student movement,” Critchley said. “It was born at Berkeley with sit-ins, and protests, The students were so respectful when they protested that even when they surrounded a cop’s car and would not let it leave for over a day, they only got on top of it with bare feet.”

The Sixties, he continued, “were momentous. At the height of the Cold War, just think of it -- not only the Free Speech Movement, but Betty Friedan’s book (The Feminine Mystique) came out, Martin Luther King was killed, the civil rights act was passed.” Critchley says there has been tremendous blowback by neoconservatives against the ‘60s, trying to trivialize, undermine and undo all the progress initiated. “Did you think we’d still be talking about birth control?” he asked. “I thought that was already decided.”

Critchley contrasts then with now: “The Supreme Court said warrants must be used for searches, in 1973 (upholding 4th amendment rights). In 1978 the FISA court was supposed to protect Americans from spying. Now they are trying to justify that what is going on (mass warrantless surveillance) is legal!”

He graduated from a conservative Connecticut Catholic college in 1964 (commenting that Savio himself came from a similar background) then went out to Berkeley in ‘68 and was vivified by the music, atmosphere, hippies, pot, the whole scene. He says his first real political activism was against nukes in the ‘70s, and he is still anti-nuke, helping the Cape Downwinders to close Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station with a postcard he created, titled “Nuke Soup." It's his own political activism which always underlies his art; he hopes that art can raise issues, keep them in the forefront of consciousness to look at the big picture.

Critchley samples the musical for me, describing that at one point Obama sings “What about American destiny?” and the response from other singers is: “What about all of humanity?” He notes that specific current events are depicted in the piece, especially the Olympics as a backdrop for Snowden’s revelations. Snowden and Savio even speak each other’s words, to compare what was said 50 years ago and what is said now.

“The musical's not just seriously political, though,” Critchley promised. “It’s funny and entertaining.” He cites a line where Putin aspires to the same amount of arrogance and excess the U.S. is accused of.

“There are so many serious issues, income equality, surveillance which has been privatized by corporations. Even Snowden himself worked for one, Booz Allen; the corporatization of government; it’s gotten so bad, it must swing back. I’m an optimist. It’s why I keep doing what I do.”

The soul of the piece, Critchley codas, is the Sam Cooke song, “A Change is Gonna Come.”

A staged reading of Planet Snowvio will be prestened at The Provincetown Theater Aug. 23 at 7:30 p.m. as a benefit for the Provincetown Theater Foundation. For tickets ($25 suggested), call 508-487-7487 or go to provincteowntheater.org

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